


My Asgardian meta

by Keenir



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asgardians - Freeform, Gen, Meta, Thor (Movies) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-16
Updated: 2013-09-16
Packaged: 2017-12-26 18:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/969013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My attempt to face one (imho) big questions in this fandom -  where is everyone on Asgard?  (mostly the warriors, but not just them)</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Asgardian meta

**ASGARD**...a planet (if it can be called that) we meet in the movie  Thor and in the various Eddas which were handed down to us by the Norse and many intervening translators. For the purposes of this meta, I will be giving priority to the movie starring Jaimie Alexander, Natalie Portman, and Tom Hiddleston; although I shall not be entirely ignoring Snorri, Saxo Grammaticus, or the other medieval writers.

First...what is Asgard?

Well, in the movie Thor, Asgard is a giant island floating in the middle of space. (I'm not even going to touch on the physics of the place...(though one of the D'NI books described and illustrated of such a place...crossover potential for anyone there)). And Asgard is populated by very strong and quite athletic humanoids who live for...we don't know how long.

(if we assume they evolved to intelligence - or to Uplift-suitability - on Asgard, we can assume that their size and long lives are a result of living on the island - we see the same on Earth...where we also see island species take a very long time between each offspring's birth. but for the most part, I'll tackle their biology in another meta)

The only hint was that their last war was when Loki was a baby...and the course of that war lasted through at least one of the Ice Ages on Earth. Problem is, we don't really know _which_ Ice Age it was... the Little Ice Age?...doubtful, that was the 1400s AD. Sometime between 200 and 1100 AD?...maybe - at least that way the Vikings might have heard something of Thor and Loki (unless those names are more common than we think). 10,000 BC?...Possible...though this would put a whole 'nother meaning to _any_ Asgardian's relationship with someone of Midgard. Once, to be evil I put the founding of Odin's dynasty as happening while our planet was in the middle of the Permian period. (if that seems unlikely, consider that there was a world-covering ice age shortly before the Cambrian Explosion)

("I'll wait." "No. Jim live too short." -from a cartoon version of Robert Heinlein's 'Red Planet' a number of years ago. very enjoyable. and relevant to this.) 

Granted, I tend to assume that, even for an Asgardian, Odin is remarkably long-lived. A good parallel would be the Pharoah Ramses...when he died, after ruling for 90 years, there were _grandparents_ who couldn't remember living under any other ruler - so when Ramses died, the country panicked. And even Ramses didn't have the sort of absolute power that Odin seems to enjoy.  
(so grabbing Loki and throwing him on the throne when Odin collapses, that makes sense...but notice that nobody even _thinks to defy Odin's decree_ of banishment, even though Odin had said Thor was the heir presumptive)

**~~~**  
 **But what are they _doing?_**

This is the big question, as I see it.

Author Isaac Asimov once observed that, if robots really do end up taking all the jobs, people will say now there is plenty of time to lie back and relax... to which Asimov replied "Except that people have a very hard time doing _nothing_ , particularly for long periods of time" (or words to that effect)

And given that, one could argue, the civilization which produced Thor and Loki and Sif is more advanced than the Three Laws from Asimov (and possibly his Psychohistory as well), it stands to reason that the statement is even more true for those in Asgard. Whether they live for a few thousand years, or for millions of years, the same applies to them. (but with their lifespans, imagine how long you could be stuck in an apprenticeship, until your teacher dies and you inherit the job; how many people do you need making Mjolnirs, after all?)

Our first problem is the sample size - we only see three large groups of Asgardians (once at the feast at the end of Thor; once in the throne room while Odin is saying how Mjolnir can create and destroy; the other during wartime when Loki was a baby, or at some point before then). The rest of the time, there are only twos and threes, with the rare small group like Thor's band of warriors. So where did everyone else go?

(we have to be careful, or we'll end up thinking either that everyone else is sitting around the feasting tables in wait for Ragnarok's arrival...or that Asgard suffered a mind-bogglingly potent Great Plague while Thor and Loki were growing up, and 90% of the population there is dead)

Perhaps the problem with our sample is that this is a long age of peace. After all, when you send your army home, they have to do _something_ , or they might turn to brigandage (this was an actual problem during and after the Crusades, among other periods - it also arises when an army can't be paid, a problem I suspect the Allfather doesn't have to worry about). This means that a possible reason for why we haven't seen much of a population on Asgard is that they're indoors hard at work.

Or maybe they aren't on Asgard at all... Odin said that the Hammer named Mjolnir was forged in the heart of a neutron star. Assuming that it was actually Asgardian labor which produced Mjolnir*, perhaps most of the population is out in space and hard at work.  
* = When another civilization or species was responsible for doing something, they tended to be named; but there was no mention of Dwarves in the film.

There is one other option, and we can thank Snorri for it...though Sif might not thank him for this: the Asgardian army might be still deployed to keep the peace. Remember that one description of the natives of Niflheim was "Frost Giants who shoot ice from their hands." So the army might still be on Niflheim.

**~~~**  
 **_"Who convinced them that a woman could be a warrior?"_ **  
_**"I did.** _

I admit, one of my first reactions to that passage was "Wait, what about Freya and all the other Norse goddesses who are good in a fight?" But this meta gives greater weight to the film than to the eddas, so that objection must be put aside, at least for now.

In the previous section, I mentioned the possibility that the army had been largely disbanded. If that is the case, then it's probably near impossible for _anybody_ to join up - though still harder for Sif ( counterbalanced by her being a friend of the Crown Prince - would _you_ tell him "No"? )

An unlikely possibility is that Sif is not the first woman warrior...but she is the first woman warrior of her generation. I've used this tactic in some fics, as a way of having both Sif & having the prior generations of warriors like Freya; but I admit I don't know how this would impact the larger society, aside from making truer the phrase "everything is personal"...(there's a bit of canon evidence one could take supporting it - "Loki may speak of the good of _Asgard_ , but he's always been jealous of _Thor_ " once Odin isn't on the throne, the assumption seems to be heir presumptive (although banished) Thor=Asgard)

A slightly more likely solution depends on an interpretation of Snorri and Saxo Grammaticus. Many translators have observed that the Vanir (on Vanaheim) tend to be agrarians and gardeners, with the powers of the harvest and nature; while the Aesir (on Asgard) tend to be abstract concepts and-or related to battle...Forseti the god of wisdom, Thor the god of law and war, Odin the god of beer and writing and storytelling and war. (though the Aesir Thor is also thunder, a nature concept; just as the Vanir Freya is a war goddess). So perhaps, when the war against Jotunheim ended so long ago, so much of the army simply became farmers...the movie doesn't have many Aesir because they've all switched over to Vanir occupations until Odin needs another army.

EDIT: one additional solution has come to mind: Thor and Sif are defining "warrior" to mean "marches in the army"...whereas other Asgardian women can fight and engage in battle, but not as part of the army.

**~~~~~~~~~~~~**

There it is, there you go; my thoughts on that aspect of the movie Thor.

Thoughts? Constructive criticism? Other details of one theory or another which I've not thought of?


End file.
